Battle in Barking

When grown men cry

Why the BNP vote is growing

IN MAY 2006 the British National Party (BNP), a far-right political outfit, gained 12 of 54 council seats in elections in the outer London borough of Barking and Dagenham. “I'm not ashamed to say I cried my eyes out that night,” says Darren Rodwell, chairman of a tenants and residents association in one of the wards that went BNP. He is standing as a Labour candidate in the local elections next week. “I will fight for this borough,” he declares, “because the BNP represent division and hatred.”

Mr Rodwell is not the only one in the area in fighting form. Margaret Hodge, a Labour MP, is in hand-to-hand combat defending her parliamentary seat against Nick Griffin, the BNP's leader. Once a solid Labour bastion of the white working class, Barking has become increasingly marginal, especially after boundary changes brought it three wards where the BNP is strong, among them Mr Rodwell's.

In doorstep debates many once-loyal Labour voters tell Mrs Hodge that this time they will vote BNP. Outside one neat home, a middle-aged white man declares: “I've got nothing against coloured people—but they are nicking our jobs. No one's stopping them coming over.” Another resident, who is sleeping in his car, claims an official told him that he wouldn't get council housing unless he were “coloured or disabled”. A former neighbour, however, born in Nigeria, says she is frightened by the BNP. “If they get in, what will happen to my children?”

Private polling by organisations close to the Labour Party suggests that the BNP vote in a number of wards is plentiful and committed now—hence the fear that the Labour-controlled council, if not the two parliamentary seats, will fall to the BNP. One reason for its popularity is Mr Griffin, who has attempted to make the BNP a respectable alternative to mainstream parties. When he launched its 90-page election manifesto on St George's Day, he stressed its economic and defence policies and played down its core aim, which is halting immigration. But the manifesto does assert the supremacy of “white British” folk who should “remain a majority in their ancestral homeland” and calls Muslim immigration “one of the most deadly threats yet to the survival of our nation”.

Labour's vote in Barking (and in the neighbouring, renamed seat of Dagenham and Rainham, held by an influential left-wing Labour MP, Jon Cruddas) has declined sharply, from around 65% in 1997 to around 50% in 2005 as the BNP vote has increased. In 2006 the BNP won a score of council seats. And in the European elections last year, for the first time, the party gained two MEPs (one of them Mr Griffin), attracting 6.2% of the popular vote across the country.

Mrs Hodge and Mr Cruddas agree on most of the reasons why the BNP has become so strong in their area. The Dagenham Ford car works, which used to employ 40,000 people, ceased production in 2002. Unemployment is high (9.7% last year, compared with a British average of 6.9%). The borough is one of the poorest in the capital. Many people lack educational qualifications (23.2% of working-age residents, compared with a national average of 12.4%). A shortage of affordable housing has created severe overcrowding, and demographic changes have not helped. In 1991 just 6.8% of the population was non-white. The council estimates that the figure is now about 25%, one of the fastest rates of change in the country. The BNP argues that local unemployment and housing shortages are down to immigration.

Mr Cruddas and Mrs Hodge do not see eye to eye, however, on how to fight the BNP. Mrs Hodge has been criticised for echoing its rhetoric about immigration and calling for favoured treatment for local families on social housing. She is unapologetic. “Immigration is the prism” through which everything is seen in the borough, she says. Residents' concerns must be addressed and met.

Andrew Rosindell, the Conservative incumbent in nearby Romford, might well agree. He has managed to contain the BNP vote (it was just 3% at the last general election) by occupying much the same ground, with hardline views on immigration, the European Union and the death penalty, and by working hard for his constituents—what he calls “pavement politics”.

For his part, Mr Cruddas takes a different line. He tries to explain to disgruntled folk that immigration is an inescapable effect of globalisation (though he criticises New Labour for encouraging the trend without managing its impact). He has also lobbied hard, and successfully, to get extra money and housing to relieve some of the pressure. But he is adamant that “we shouldn't chase after the BNP's slogans.”

Echoing this view, Nick Lowles of Searchlight, a group that campaigns against racism, instead highlights the attendance and expenses record of BNP councillors and MEPs (both are poor). Searchlight reminds people that a number of the party's members have criminal convictions related to race hatred. And it tries to mobilise the non-BNP vote, using churches and community groups, as well as techniques such as “friendship networks” honed in Barack Obama's presidential campaign, to increase registration and turnout. He reckons the two parliamentary seats, and indeed the council, are safer than they were a month ago (although a personable Tory candidate, Simon Jones, is causing Mr Cruddas some trouble).

The schisms within the BNP itself (its publicity director was recently arrested for allegedly making death threats against Mr Griffin) may also reduce its showing at the polls. To add to the party's woes, the Electoral Commission has announced that it is investigating its accounts for 2008.

Tony Travers, of the London School of Economics, says Labour “is completely split about what to do about the threat of the BNP”. In fact all liberal parties find it hard to “put across an offer that goes some way to recognising the aspirations and feelings of those who vote BNP”. But if they don't engage with the people who support the BNP out of a sense of powerlessness, the party will advance. If it wins control of the council or a parliamentary seat, it will be time, Mr Travers concludes, “to press the panic button”.